Camrelizumab monotherapy leading to partial remission for relapsed upper tract urothelial carcinoma after radical nephroureterectomy: a case report

Upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) is a rare malignant disease, and while locally advanced non-metastatic UTUC can be cured by radical nephroureterectomy (RNU), this procedure leaves patients at high risk of relapse and death from cancer. Though the FDA has currently approved five agents for the systemic immunotherapy treatment of urothelial carcinoma (UC) patients, the effect of immunotherapy in patients with recurrent UTUC still lacks specific evidence. Camrelizumab is a programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor which has been approved for the treatment of recurrent or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma in China and have achieved improvement in a verity of solid tumors with manageable safety profile. We herein report a case of an 80-year-old woman diagnosed with localized UTUC (pT4N0M0) for which she underwent RNU but relapsed after 2 months. As the toxic effects of chemotherapy were intolerable for the patient, she received the PD-1 inhibitor Camrelizumab as a salvage treatment to stop tumor growth. The tumor shrank and the patient achieved partial response (PR) after eight cycles but progressed after 14 cycles. Based on the current evidence, our case indicated that Camrelizumab is a promising agent in treating locally advanced and recurrent UTUC patients with poor performance status and imparted renal function.